CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VIII (1) ContemporaryEurasia81 | Page 12

PALESTINIAN REFUGEE CAMPS IN LEBANON: GOVERNANCE AND VIOLENCE
hamper business activity and prevent customers and suppliers from entering,
adding to the daily suffering of the resident refugees. 27
In the absence of a formal mode of law enforcement and camp
policing, different Lebanese security agencies are intervening. One UNRWA
area officer reported that, historically, “I used to receive calls from one or
two agencies of the camp’s security administration in case there was a
problem. Now there are at least four such agencies. This shows how far the
Lebanese security agencies have infiltrated the camp and appointed
collaborators”. One member of the popular committee in the Beddawi camp
confirmed this account, stating that “a few years ago, we used to denounce
and isolate the collaborators. Now who is not a collaborator?” Instead of
bringing attention to the asymmetrical power structures and collusion
between the popular committees and military intelligence, the media,
particularly newspapers, emphasize a mode of cooperation between them. 28
Former Prime Minister Fuad Siniora 29 has referred to Nahr al-Bared as
a model of camp governance to be implemented in other camps. The Vienna
document issued in 2008 by the Lebanese government for the donors’
conference to rebuild the ruined Nahr al-Bared camp uses the term
“community policing”. However, in practice, the Lebanese authorities have
opted for a militarized governmental regime in the form of counter-
insurgency policing. Some refugee camps, such as Ayn al-Hilweh, are under
siege by the army, which monitors entry and exit points. The Nahr al-Bared
camp and its surrounding area are a military zone governed by the Internal
Security Forces (ISF) through the semblance of a police station. 30 However,
the camp residents seek to resist such militarized governance and a few
resort to violence. In the new governance plan, a division of labor emerges
through which the army ensures a regime of separation and control, while
the ISF controls the economic and political status of the camp, facilitating
economic extraction and exploitation. 31 State governmental control is
characterized not by the enforcement of well-defined rules and laws, but by
the suspension of these rules through a bureaucratic apparatus that imposes
different modes of intervention and whose very unpredictability is the key to
its effectiveness. The intervention takes the form of real or suspended
violence. Some researchers and human rights activists were arrested in 2010
because of their criticism of the Lebanese Authorities Forces’ (LAF’s) role
27
Ibid.
For the army declaration after the theft of a gun from a policeman, see Abdel Khafi Samed,
“Attack on a Security Officer”, al-Akhbar, September 2, 2008.
29
Fuad Siniora was Prime Minister of Lebanon from July 18, 2005 till November 9, 2009.
30
Hanafi, “Constructing and Governing Nahr al-Bared Camp”, see Lebanon’s Palestinian
Dilemma: The struggle over Nahr al-Bared, International Crisis group, Middle East Report No
117- March 1, 2012.
31
Susan Buck-Morss, Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left, (New
York: Verso, 2003).
28
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